Network connections are typically plagued by latency problems. In particular, latency created through packet dropping and retransmissions can cause bottle necks in flows that decrease network throughput and lead to poor overall performance of a network in providing network service access. This problem is further exacerbated by the fact that TCP connections typically rely on loss sensitive congestion control mechanisms for controlling packet transmission in the TCP connections.
In order to improve latency and throughput in TCP connections, loss insensitive congestion control mechanisms have been developed. Loss insensitive control mechanisms in TCP connections rely on actual congestion rather than packet loss in buffers to control how fast data is sent over the TCP connections. While TCP connection performance is improved using loss insensitive congestion control mechanisms, loss insensitive TCP congestion control mechanisms can be unnecessarily impacted by acknowledgements sent in TCP connections, e.g. 802.11 acknowledgements sent in TCP connections. There therefore exist needs for system and methods for reducing an impact of acknowledgments sent in TCP connections on TCP connections managed, at least in part, through loss insensitive control mechanisms.
Often times TCP connections are formed over different connection types, e.g. wired and wireless connections. Such connections, forming different parts of TCP connections, can operate according to their own separate communication protocols/acknowledgment protocols. Specifically, 802.11 compliant connections, herein referred to as “WiFi connections,” can use specific acknowledgement protocols for transmitting data as part of transmitting packets in the TCP connection. These acknowledgement protocols can impact an overall loss insensitive congestion control mechanism of TCP connections. For example, acknowledgements sent in a WiFi connection can introduce latency and lead to retransmissions further creating even more latency over the WiFi connection. Further, as WiFi connections are inherently lossy and prone to interference, latency problems over WiFi connections are further exacerbated by acknowledgements sent in the WiFi connections. Ultimately, this can increase latency and reduce throughput over a TCP connection formed, at least in part, over the WiFi connection, thereby negating the improved performance benefits achieved by using a loss insensitive control mechanism over the TCP connection. There therefore exist needs for systems and methods for reducing impact of acknowledgment protocols used in TCP connections on latency when loss insensitive mechanisms are used to control congestion in the TCP connections.